Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Good News IF True

Comcast maybe looking to sink the Disney/Fox merger.Comcast, CNBC’s owner, could also consider topping Disney’s bid for Fox, according to people familiar with the matter. No decision has been made by Comcast on a topping bid yet, said the people, who asked not to be named because the decision is private. Disney is already preparing itself for a Comcast topping bid and considering responses in case, according to multiple people familiar with Disney’s thinking.

An unsolicited offer at a premium to Disney’s bid could persuade enough Fox shareholders to vote against Murdoch. His family controls 39 percent of Fox’s Class B voting shares but owns only 17 percent of all outstanding shares. Comcast executives suggested to Murdoch last year they would be willing to pay significantly more for Fox’s assets than what Disney was offering, said the people. Murdoch still went with the Disney offer, in large part due to regulatory concerns with Comcast.Comcast has made moves in this direction before but the deal always hit the rocks due to concerns of "vertical integration". IE creating a monopoly.

The thing is, the Disney/Fox merger comes damn close to creating one anyway. Especially given that Disney had already announced that it was pulling out of Netflix to open it's own streaming service. Now consider what happens when Disney also pulls Fox's movies out Netflix in favor of MouseStream.com. The old regulatory challenge means nothing under these new circumstances.

The Murdoch brothers favor the Disney deal because they are being guaranteed important titles with big offices even if Iger doesn't trust them to suck their own... successfully pick their own noses but at this point who cares what they think? Fox's board will be voting on which way their jobs effectively go out of existence as it stands. So why not go with the company who is leaving the highest stacks on the table?

I suppose my real objection to this merger is the fact that I come from a family of WaltDisney fans and Bob Iger has been erasing hiscompany's corporate identity with each new acquisition. Disney is not absorbing ABC, ESPN, Marvel and Star Wars. They are absorbing Disney. Each new buy out has brought in a shit ton of Deep State connected SJWs. ABC in particular was an absolutely poisonous purchase.

And the stupid part is that Iger is getting all kinds of credit for what are short term gain, long term loss decisions because he always buys high and then the property starts to ebb in value. ESPN and Marvel Comics are the harbingers of many, many bad things to come. Mark my words, Star Wars is going to be the next domino to fall. Marvel looks to be solid but for how long?

Superhero movies have been doing well for nearly twenty years but when you are talking about a 52 billion dollar acquisition, you are clearly planning on them remaining this big for another twenty. Buying back the X-Men and the Fantastic Four kind of makes sense if you own Marvel but these franchises are out of gas. And Avatar is potentially a studio wrecking disaster. The Fox merger was only a good deal if you didn't look to closely at it.

In short I am really hoping that Comcast can train wreck it.

Now this may come to nothing as there is no formal bid yet. BUT Iger is making a lot of, everything is fine with the deal nothing to see hear, noises.